Monday, March 02, 2015

Virtual Reality 'Game of Thrones' on Vive's stunning rival to Oculus

VR is a amazing medium not a mere gadget. I’ve been playing around with the
Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 then Development Kit 2 for over a year, helped get some learning applications
funded and see it playing a real role in ‘learning by doing’. Having demoed it
to hundreds of people across Europe and in Africa, all I can say is that the
most common reaction is ‘Awesome!”. What we’re all waiting on is the consumer
launch.

Learning potential

In learning we all yearn for something that can really hold sustained
attention, induce intense emotion, allow learning by doing, provide relevant
context, enable transfer, increase retention, provide cognitive swap and above
all, allow you to do things that are impossible in the real world. These are just seven principles in learning that suggest it has huge potential. Here's a brief selection.

Consumer tech

But what makes technology based learning fly is its cultural
acceptance. The technology is always ahead of the more sluggish sociology. We’re
all now comfortable with search on the internet, Wikipedia, hyperlinked content, learning from
YouTube, TED and Khan videos, contributing within a network of professionals on
social media. Whenever a sustained, irreversible, global, consumer base develops,
learning applications follow.

This is why the Facebook purchase of Oculus Rift was sosignificant. They were first to get on their racing bike but there’s a peloton
forming and the race constantly changes as new challengers emerge from the pack. Since that $2.3 billion dollar announcement, the other
industry giants have gone goggle-eyed and pushed their R&D teams to get
something to market soon. Samsung, Microsoft and others know that this shift
from 2D to 3D may be a huge opportunity, as a new medium emerges. That doesn’t happen
very often – paper print, radio, film, TV, 2d web…… what’s next?

Valve’s top ten
features

Now another big consortium has emerged as pacemaker – Valve
& HTC. This is big news for the following 10 reasons:

1. HTC are making the screen

2. Two 1200x1080 displays

3. Refresh rate of 90 frames a second

4. Great field of view

5. Stem VR base station for avatar control (within 15x15 ft room)

6. Wireless HTC controllers for each hand (gloves?)

7. Controller’s positions tracked

8. Headset is very light

9. Google, HBO onboard

10. Release promised in 2015

This is a big step up from the Oculus Rift DK2 with a significant
technology difference. The Valve headset contains cameras that track your
movement, rather than the Oculus’s cameras tracking the headset. It’s the
Oculus tracking in reverse, although it still has the accelerometer and
gyroscope.

There’s a pre-release video, that’s not so great, but the
launch is this week (2-5 March) at the Game Developer’s Conference. Their
promise – developer’s kit this Spring, then release ‘holiday 2015’, by which I
take to be Christmas.

Entertainment

One thing most vendors realise is that this is just about
gaming. The games market is huge and can drive this forward but the
entertainment, education and health markets are bigger. This is not a gadget –
it’s a new medium, applicable in almost every domain you can imagine. HBO are
in on the Valve act, NBA in on Oculus - so expect some Game of Thrones VR and
court-side viewing on launch. TV and film may never be the same again.

Conclusion

This is great news, but let’s not get too carried away. This
is a long race, not a velodrome sprint. Competition has driven this forward.
Consumer VR will be here, as I thought, this year. It all comes down to
marketing, price and quality of the product. As HTC CEO Peter Chou announced when showing the
Vive for the first time on stage “We believe virtual reality will totally
transform the way we interact with the world. It will become a mainstream
experience for general consumers. The possibilities are limitless.”